The serious Democrat presidents changed vice presidents and went on to win.
by Conrad Black
All the great Democratic propaganda effort to build Joe Biden as a successful president is now colliding rather amusingly with the desire of the party bosses and the rank-and-file to dissuade the president from seeking reelection. They have convinced themselves that Mr. Biden could defeat President Trump again in a presidential election, though there will be much tighter rules about unsolicited and unverifiable mailed ballots, which were controversial in 2020.
A majority of the country disapproves of Mr. Biden’s performance, and a sizable majority even of Democrats don’t wish him to seek reelection. The polls at this point are ambiguous about the result of a direct Biden-Trump runoff. In 2020 the party elders rescued Biden from the ditch where he had landed after the New Hampshire primary, (fifth place with 11 percent of the vote), and placed him in the saddle on Super Tuesday. There is, though, no precedent for an incumbent elected president to be denied renomination when he sought it.
The mediocre Jimmy Carter saw off Teddy Kennedy in 1980, and the phlegmatic but adequate William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republicans against Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, although Roosevelt as an independent ran ahead of Taft in the general election, splitting the Republican vote and elevating the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.
The rabidly pro-Democratic press, receiving confused signals from those they serve, are understandably presenting an ambiguous message. The plastering they gave Donald Trump over the phony classified documents issue helped the president narrow his deficit in the polls before the midterm elections and reminded the country of the chaos that ensues when Mr. Trump is a frontrunning political personality and the Democratic press is in full-smear mode.
Part of the general fanfare to cushion the rejection the country wished to inflict upon the administration in the midterms was this astonishing Pinocchio-chorus that Joe Biden is a highly accomplished president.
Last week, though I long ago reached the point where it is difficult for me to be astonished by any nonsense from the American national political media, I suffered momentary glottal stops and slight hyperventilation when I happened to see MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, the daughter of one of America’s most talented national security advisers, my friend Zbigniew Brzezinski, half- declare and half-ask whoever was on camera with her if it was not agreed that Biden was one of the most accomplished presidents in living memory. This is the party line, dispensed by once serious historians like Michael Beschloss and Jon Meacham.
To less fervent partisans, it seems like mistaken identity. Inflation has soared, urban violent crime has soared, and the administration is acting in concert with the most violent crime gangs in the world, in Northern Mexico, to admit from five to ten thousand people across the southern border daily, bringing tons of deadly fentanyl annually with them. This policy is poorly disguised by endless lies from the administration.
With American official complicity, these gangs effectively govern northern Mexico. The ignominious departure from Afghanistan was (accurately) denounced as “shameful” in the British parliament, and left $85 billion worth of military hardware and thousands of loyal American collaborators behind for the delectation and gentle mercies of the Taliban.
The Green Terror is strangling American industry and the administration is at war with the domestic oil and gas industry, surrendering America’s hard-won status as an energy-independent country. In Ukraine, having opened by excusing a mere “incursion” and fallen in with the egregious chairman of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley, that the Russians would take Ukraine over completely within a few weeks, Mr. Biden has oscillated between unrealistic demands for total Russian defeat and concerns about anything “escalatory.”
There is no apparent strategic grasp of the necessity of reconciling the need to prevent Russia from snuffing out Ukrainian independence and substantially repealing the outcome of the Cold War, and the necessity to avoid driving Russia into the arms of the Chinese. Any combination of untapped Siberian resources and surplus Chinese manpower would seriously escalate the strategic challenge from China.
The Taiwan outlook is a little better as a promise of direct assistance to Taiwan in the event of an attack from China was included in the Defense Authorization Act, which begins to reduce the mystery over what an American response to a Chinese invasion would be. Yet the teaching of racist nonsense and over-emphasis on trans-gender issues has reduced military recruitment, and many aspects of national defense are seriously deficient, despite the generosity Trump deluged onto the Pentagon.
Mr. Biden’s “accomplishments,” apart from unlimited truckling to the woke elements spewing racism and outright American self-hate that dominate in the Democratic party, are hard to identify. There were the horribly expensive Covid Relief, infrastructure, and a so-called inflation reduction measure, which filled up the Democratic pork barrel, stoked up debt and inflation, but has so far done little that is useful.
At this point, President Trump had reduced taxes, spurred the economy, effectively eliminated unemployment in a growing work force, rolled back the mindless Obama-Biden Green Terror, drastically reduced illegal immigration, begun the economic strangulation of Iran and North Korea, imposed restraints on China, and shaken NATO from the spurious “alliance of the willing” to an alliance of states that will pay their way.
He did more for the economic status of minorities than any president since Lyndon Johnson. President Obama at this stage in his term, had at least broadened medical care, and started his green lunacy. George W. Bush had retaliated effectively against terrorism throughout the world, and improved U.S. relations with India.
President Reagan had taken a long start toward ending the Cold War satisfactorily and stoking up the greatest economic boom in history. President Nixon had started to hand the Vietnam War over to the South Vietnamese, open relations with China, negotiate the greatest arms control and reduction agreement in world history, and was about to found the Environmental Protection Agency and was on his way to abolishing the draft.
Joe Biden’s record is puny in comparison with all of them. Ms. Brzezinski, ignorant of the past though she is, illustrates the difficulties of inflating a fake Biden balloon of presidential success while stirring up controversies and attitudes designed to dissuade him from seeking reelection. Now that the party barons want Biden out, it gets much more complicated, and the comparative obscurity conferred on Mr. Trump enables him to gain silently in the polls while more than holding his following among Republicans.
Democrats have failed, the RINO’s have failed with them, and the House of Representatives will steadily lift the rock on the anti-Trump skulduggery of the last six years. The former FBI chief, James Comey; former CIA director, John Brennan; and former national intelligence director, James Clapper, and their claque may escape the prison holidays their misconduct and lies under oath have earned them, but they should have a bumpy sleigh-ride.
Mr. Trump isn’t a felon, Mr. Biden isn’t competent, and the best the Democrats may be able to do is nominate a less frighteningly vapid vice president. Serious presidents, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, and FDR changed vice presidents and were reelected. Joe Biden isn’t in that category, however credulously the legion of choreographed Mika Brzezinskis regard him.
First published in the New York Sun.
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
One Response
Agreed, save this bit: “substantially repealing the outcome of the Cold War”. That’s a modest exaggeration.
First, 30 years is a long run for an unmodified geopolitical settlement, and even the Congress of Vienna had been tweaked a few times at that age.
Second, even a Russian victory in annexing what they hold now would be a modest backward step, not a substantial repeal. Even their satellizing Ukraine would be only a mid level ‘repeal’, insofar as they have succeeded in doing that a couple of times already since the 90s, when the contest started for Ukraine. And considering the existence of the USSR until 1991 and the Warsaw Pact until 1989, and the geography involved, no, even Russian annexation of the whole Ukraine would not be a “substantial repeal” of the outcome of the Cold War, though it would be a noticeable and undesirable revision.